(Which is perhaps a momentary digression from our story, but will serve, for all that to fix its setting more vividly in the eyes of the mind.) When Milo Standish came back from Miami that noon he professed much loud-voiced joy at seeing his guest so well recovered from the night's mishaps.

At lunch, he suggested: "I am running across to Roustabout Key this afternoon, in the launch.

It's an island I bought a few years ago.

I keep a handful of men there to work a grapefruit grove and a mango orchard and some other stuff I've planted.

I go over to it every week or so.